Harder, But Not Better
by mcmachine
Summary: Post 14x12. April has Harriet for the night and ponders how she's going to get through everything.


When I finally get home from work, the day has felt impossibly long.

It shouldn't have, and I knew that. Not a minute was spent inside of the operating room between making sure that the emergency room was flowing properly, and organizing the contest. At least after the first morning, people had gotten off of my back with all of the stupid questions that they'd mustered up. All of the proposals had actually been pretty impressive to read and go through, sparking thoughts of my own work for the future. I hadn't done any real research work since I'd become an attending – not for lack of interest, necessarily, but there's always been something else on my mind. The thrill of surgery was something that couldn't be competed with, and staring through a microscope and messing around with Petri dishes just didn't have the same level of enticement. I lived to cut.

At least, at the hospital I did. When it came to taking my daughter home at the end of the day though, she was my entire reason for existence. The drive home made her sleepy inside of her carrier, all the more adorable with tiny yet long lashes fluttering against her bright eyes. They were Jackson's eyes much more than mine, anyone who saw her knew that almost instantly. She looked almost identical to his baby pictures, but I don't mind. He'd always been handsome, his entire life. And my childhood years had been less than stellar. Let her live without the things I did.

Her bedtime was already passed by the time that we get home, and it's quick work of her nighttime routine. Harriet's morning nap was slowly being removed from her schedule, shortening as a test time, and it'd been leaving her tired at the end of the day – much to my appreciation. I love having her awake and playing with her, but listening to her cry and cry for me when I put her down as painful.

Settling down in the rocking chair, I open up the book that I've been reading to her most recently. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. It's heavy material for a child, but she's at the age where she won't remember much more than the sound of my voice, and I'd bought it years ago intending to read it and never getting around to it.

Of course, there are still parts of violence that even I can't bring myself to read out loud to her. She doesn't notice the difference between me humming and babbling to her in between the worst of it, and me actually reading the book to her.

But the book gets me thinking much more than I want it to. The narrator was awful – it made me angry, his cowardice, wondering how anyone could like him and why the author would choose to center the book around him. Yet… I have to wonder if I've become like Amir. Maybe I was the unlikable one, occasionally unfathomable circumstances bringing me pity. I've been questioning everything about myself lately and this just seemed to follow suit with everything that's been going on in my mind. Hassan was the good one, and look what had happened to him. The world screwed him over just like everyone else. My God, his God – no one was out there looking out for him, stopping the worst of humanity from tearing apart his hope and his world.

If He was out there, every day it became clearer that he didn't care. Maybe this was just a book, a work of fiction, but that didn't make what happened to the character any less true. Horrific events happened to good people. To Matthew. And I'd been one of those events.

The thought stills me and I stop reading mid-sentence, lightly dropping the paperback onto the carpeted floor so it doesn't make a noise. I look down at Harriet and am relieved to find her asleep peacefully in my arms, the smallest of smiles just barely curled across the one-year-old's features. Maybe she looks more like Jackson than me, but that smile was a familiar one. I'd see it throughout my life. There's comfort in seeing myself in my daughter, and fear at the same time. I didn't know how the hell I was going to pull myself out of this, but I know that need to. I can't let her know a mother like me, can't let her go through the same tumultuous doubt in her relationship with faith. Jackson would be enough of a challenge – I had to be a rock for her faith, a role model. Yet today, this week, I can't find a reason inside of me not to curse God for everything He has and hasn't done.

All of my energy goes in not letting the thoughts get the best of me, yet its harder and harder. The unopened bottle of rosé in my fridge was calling my name, unsettling my stomach. Wine had been my crutch for the past week while Jackson had Harriet, and sex. The latter definitely wasn't going to happen, not while my daughter was at home. That was too complicated and I didn't want to get into it.

And I definitely didn't want Roy to get the wrong idea about where this was heading. Sex was sex and nothing more. I'm not normally much of a dominant personality in the bedroom, but I'd finally make a change of that. Getting on top of him and screwing myself into oblivion was a much quicker way than getting wine drunk, and the combination of the two was the perfect bedtime remedy for me. I could only wish that I went down as easily as Harriet did in the past few days, a chapter of a book and out like a light. But life had made it clear that it did not intend to be that kind to me.

"Goodnight, nugget," I whispered softly and bent down my head to place a warm kiss on Harriet's head. She doesn't stir and I take that as a good sign, slowly getting up from the rocking chair to place her down in the crib.

I can't walk away easily, though, that was something that I had never been capable of when it came to taking care of Harriet. For the first few weeks after her birth, both in the hospital and after coming home (sort of), I'd been plagued with nightmares about her. It was something that I'd tried to keep from Jackson, Arizona, and anyone else who might've cared enough to notice. The only perk of the situation was that no one questioned the exhaustion of a woman who had such a young baby at home. But I was so terrified of something happening to her and didn't know how to deal with it in a good way.

Now, I'm scared I'll be the something terrible to happen to her.

My hand wrapped around the railing of the crib as I watched her sleep soundly, taking a deep breath to try and control the tears that had already begun to form in my eyes, just beginning to blur the periphery of my vision. I don't want to break down, not again. Arizona had already brought me close today when she'd tried to erase the weight of the blame that I was carrying on my shoulders after Karen's death. Now it seemed like she was trying to carry it, as if she hadn't insinuated that it was my fault initially. That burn wasn't one that she could wipe away in one conversation.

"I love you so much, baby girl," I reached down as I spoke and rubbed the pad of my thumb gently against a chubby cheek. The first genuine smile in a week tugged at the corner of my lips, a certain fondness emerging that only Harriet was now capable of bringing out inside me. My heart is heavy, but it's enough to pull it upward just for a few moments.

"And I hope that you never feel the way I do right now," I continued to whisper. "You're going to have a beautiful life, I'm going to make sure of that. And you're never going to feel as awful as I do right now." My own words end up being the thing to vindicate me, a tear spilling past my lids. I sniffle quickly to try and repel it off my features, withdrawing my hand from daughter's form and wiping it away quickly. A deep, noisy breath is taken though it doesn't clear out the sadness that's taken to infecting my sinuses.

Turning on the white noise machine and slipping out of the nursery as quietly as possible with the baby monitor in hand, I make my way down the hallway to the kitchen. The bottle of rosé is already sitting out on the counter – my grocery store run this week had pretty much been quick, cheap food and wine, much to the judgment of the elderly woman who had rung me up. The food had made its way to the pantry but I hadn't seen the point in putting in any of the wine with the rate that I had been going through it recently. Sure, Roy had helped some. But he was more interested in having sex with me than he was in my wine. I don't mind that so much. It just meant more for me, and it was exactly what I needed by the end of the today.

Tonight isn't any different. I don't hesitate in popping the cork out of the bottle and grabbing a clean glass from the cupboard, but I pause before pouring it and glance at the monitor that I'd set down on the counter. The other end is quiet, all signs pointing toward a happily sleeping one-year-old.

But I can't bring myself to pour a glass.

Letting go of my crutch, my hands instead wrap around the counter and I bend at the waist, canting forward slightly and letting out a loud sign. I want the wine. I absolutely want the wine, I need the thoughts to be drowned out, I need some kind of lightness in my head that'll make it easier to fall asleep alone when I don't have my typical go-to.

Yet it felt wrong to go through that entire bottle when my daughter's here and asleep in her crib, her entire existence dependent on me. I can't be a bad mom, I won't be one. I refuse. After everything that I had been through with Samuel, and all of the suffering that surgery had brought me both physically and mentally when it came to bringing her into the world, I've already proven to myself that I have the capacity to be an amazing mother. And I can't throw that down the drain, not now or ever. Maybe God had forsaken me, but I wasn't about the be the woman who willingly forsook her own daughter. I can't do that to myself, and I can't do that to Harriet.

My hands shake as I put the empty glass back in the cupboard, hiding the bottle on one of the higher shelves of the pantry. "I can do this," I muttered to myself and shut the door of the pantry a little harder than usual, pausing to lean back against it.

I looked at the monitor once again before shutting my eyes and picturing Harriet in her crib, soundly sleeping. By now, she probably had her thumb in her mouth. She'd been sucking at it more and more lately, preferring it over her own pacifier despite my insistence. It's a habit that'll go away one day, so I let it happen for now.

Bed is the only option for me at this point, and I know it. Grabbing the monitor, I make my way back to the bedroom, sheets still a mess from the night before. Sighing loudly, I strip the sheets and the pillowcases and throw them in the washer to be dealt with tomorrow – I want something clean, fresh. Clean linens are pulled out from the closet and I make up my bed again, spraying a little Febreeze so they won't smell like they've been folded in the same place for two weeks. Lavender was supposed to be calming, good for sleep. Maybe it would make up for the absence of alcohol in my system.

Rolling on my side so that I faced the monitor, I can't help but speak to Harriet. "I love you so much, baby girl." I know she can't hear me, but it helps nonetheless. Anything to do with her made it better. She would be the only reason that I made it through tonight. But I'm okay with that.

Because Harriet would be the reason that I made it through every night.


End file.
